Shrimp Plants (Justicia)

Justicia brandegeana, the shrimp plant, is a subtropical evergreen shrub from Mexico, grown the world over for the curious, shrimp-like flower spikes that give the plant its name: arching, overlapping bracts in warm coppery orange, salmon, and rust, from which small white flowers peek like a shrimp's legs. The bracts hold their color for weeks, so a well-grown plant seems always in bloom.

Hardiness

Zones 8–11

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

2–4 ft.

Spread

2–4 ft.

Bloom

Orange

Plant type

Shrub

The shrimp plant earns the name honestly. The arching flower spikes are built of overlapping bronze-to-pink bracts, each one curved and shingled over the next, so that the whole drooping cluster reads unmistakably as the tail of a boiled shrimp. This is the soft pink form, gentler in color than the coppery-salmon type most people picture, and out of the bracts slip the true flowers: slender, white, two-lipped tubes freckled with maroon at the throat.

Hardiness

Zones 8–11

Light

Part Shade / Full Sun

Height

2–4 ft.

Spread

2–4 ft.

Bloom

Pink

Plant type

Shrub

Traditional use

digestive health, topical applications